


A Makeshift Eden

by littlekiwifrog



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Backstories are explored and made less lame, F/F, Gen, Illustrated Headers I'm Very Proud of, Nick has Secrets™, Noir Buddy Cop Story, Sole is still figuring out how to detective, Spanish Sole Survivor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 18:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlekiwifrog/pseuds/littlekiwifrog
Summary: A mysterious, synth-eyed woman appears at the Valentine-Dust Detective Agency and proceeds to Cause Problems.





	A Makeshift Eden

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic and was written over a year ago and I completely forgot about it, so. Enjoy x

 

  


The agency’s doorknob turned, and without even looking up, Cordelia could tell it wasn’t a client.

Clients had a tendency to treat the door with a deliberate, cautious kindness despite how badly the old thing stuck, as if making allies with it could give them an easy escape if the place turned out to be some sort of Institute trap after all. On the contrary, the agency was probably one of the least-shady places in town save a few, isolated incidents.

Like last night.

Cordelia heaved a sigh and paused the game of Zeta Invaders she’d been playing in favor of doing the paperwork piled beside her, and leaned her cheek into her knuckles as she watched the door be shoved open in a way that probably would’ve started a fight, were it a person. “Oh my _God_ , Nick,” she said, “did you manage to pick the wrong night to go out—“ but her words were cut off by the sight of him.

Nick looked utterly exhausted, which was rather impressive for someone who didn’t need to eat or sleep--His usually bright eyes dim under the shade of his fedora’s brim and his shoulders slumped in a way far removed from the cool ease he normally held himself with.

“ _Dios_ ,” Cordelia stood as he leaned heavily against the office wall. “What happened to you?”

Nick produced a cigarette from his trench coat’s pocket and placed it at the corner of his mouth, the movement jerky and uncharacteristically mechanical. “They ever teach you about EMPs at your fancy law school?”

Cordelia sucked in a breath between her teeth, images of green pulses of light and slumping Assaultrons flashing through her mind. “Who the hell was hitting you with EMPs?” she asked, trying to sound more like she was asking who’d gotten his food order wrong rather than who’d assaulted him. “Do we need to hire a hitman?”

Nick managed a normal-sounding laugh, much to Cordelia’s relief. “Nah, just your run-of-the-mill hooligans. I’ll be fine. Internals just need a chance to recover.”

She quirked her mouth as he jerkily lit his cigarette and took a long drag, smoke furling from the gaps where the grayed silicon at his jaw and throat had worn away. “Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, Delia,” he said firmly, straightening from his slumped position against the wall as if to prove his point, despite his still not-quite-bright-enough eyes. “Now, if you’ve got your fill of fretting, was there something you were gonna tell me?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cordelia said, seating herself on the edge of her desk. “We had a…visitor last night.”

Nick cocked a thin, worn eyebrow. “What kinda visitor?”

“The vaguely threatening, cryptic kind,” she told him. “Around eleven last night, Ellie and I were cleaning up after dinner and this woman just waltzes in here. No knock on the door, no ‘excuse me, can I come in?’ _nada de eso_. And she was so—so _clean_. She had this overcoat that looked like it’d even been in the presence of dirt, and this--this beautiful silk scarf around her hair? And, and—oh, and these bright red sunglasses, which was extra weird, since it was dark out.

“Anyway. After she comes in here she just stares at us for at least a minute before Ellie sort of awkwardly informs her that we’re closed for the evening but she could make an appointment for tomorrow. And then—okay, imagine a Mr. Handy English accent, but imagine it about twenty times more posh—she goes;” Cordelia puffed out her chest and donned a low-lidded, aloof expression. “—‘that won’t be a problem, dear, I’m not a client.’”

Nick looked equal parts amused and concerned. “What’d she want then?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” said Cordelia. “Ellie asked her if there was something we could help her with, but the lady just stares at her for another minute, and then goes ‘Is Mr. Valentine in?’ like she hadn’t heard her at all. Then I chime in and tell her you’re out for the evening, but I’m your partner, and could pass a message on for her, etcetera. Cue more long silent staring. Then she says ‘that won’t be necessary, dear,’—and then she pulls down her sunglasses,” Cordelia demonstrated by pulling her own eyeglasses to the tip of her nose, “and she had synth eyes, Nick!”

Even through the blurriness of her unbespectacled eyes, she could see his brow crease. “Synth eyes?”

“Yup, just like yours.” She pushed her glasses back up matter-of-factly. “Yellow, glowy, the whole deal.”

“Huh,” he said, the actuators in his arms audible as he crossed them. “She look human otherwise?”

“As far as I could tell, yeah. But she was doing a pretty deliberate job of covering herself up with the coat and sunglasses, so who knows.”

Nick took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette then exhaled, the smoke lit pink by the neon sign that hung along the back wall. “She say anything else?”

“Only to tell you that she would ‘be in touch’, which is, you know--” she made a general, cartoonishly threatening sort of gesture.

“I’ll say,” Nick agreed. “The question then is exactly what she wants to keep in touch about.”

“Repair tips, limb calibration, the pros and cons of different brands of hydraulic fluid?” Cordelia offered with a smile. “Or maybe she just wants to drink all your coolant like some sort of synth-vampire. She definitely had the look for it with that coat.”

Nick chuckled, and reached to twist his cigarette into the ashtray on his desk. Cordelia watched the intricate joints of his exposed hand as he performed the motion, and something occurred to her.

“I thought you quit?” she said, indicating the ashtray. A few weeks ago she’d found several packs of unopened cigarettes lying in the bottom of the office waste basket, and when questioned, Nick had simply smiled and said ‘well it doesn’t make much sense for me in the first place, does it?’

“It’s been a long night,” he said in a tired exhale, “and I don’t exactly have the luxury of sleepin’ it off, unfortunately.”

There was a twinge of something at that last word, but it was too brief for Cordelia to identify. “If it makes you feel better…”

“What’d make me feel better right now is if we could find out who the broad with the synth eyes is and what she wants,” he said. “You get anything else from her?”

“Not really,” said Cordelia slowly, mentally leafing through the incident. “Nothing besides what I told you already, anyway. She didn’t exactly go into a villainous monologue.”

“Hm,” he furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “Well, the most obvious guess would be that she’s from the Institute, with those eyes.” He made a disdainful noise, “Though I don’t know why they’d be botherin’ now…”

She offered him a wry, sympathetic smile. “Yeah, I think that’d be kind of unlikely given their current...technical difficulties,” her smile gaining a bit of wickedness. “And nobody’s mentioned anything to me while I’ve been down there. Maybe she’s just a very well-dressed escapee?”

“Could be,” Nick agreed. “But, even then, the question still stands--why bother to come lookin’ for me?” He shook his head, “I think we oughta start a file for this one, just in case.”

“Ellie already beat you to it,” Cordelia said, stretching towards the secretary’s desk to pick up the manila folder there. “She seemed kinda freaked out about the whole incident, so she stayed up working on this. I don’t think she slept.”

Nick’s brow pinched as he took the folder from her. “Hope she’s alright…”

“I sent her on an early breakfast run in hopes that the fresh air would help,” Cordelia said with a shrug as he perused the file. “I was…actually thinking we could give her some time off in lieu of last night. I feel like it’s pretty well-deserved. She could get some rest, relax a bit, come stay up the Lighthouse with everyone…”

He looked up from the file he’d been reading, one eyebrow raised. “Isn’t Piper staying up there right now?”

Cordelia blinked innocently. “Well, I mean, yeah. She’s doing an article on the place.”

“So this invitation would be for the sake of Ellie’s safety, and not because you want her and Piper to spend more time together, right?”

She brought a hand to her chest. “Nicholas Valentine, what a ridiculous accusation! I want Ellie to be safe from—from enigmatic femme fatales, and the Lighthouse is a geographically advantageous place to be. Everyone up there loves her, and Han’s up there right now too, so you know she’ll be extra safe.”

“And Piper’s sweet on her,” Nick added, not without a note of amusement in his voice.

“That…is completely secondary to why I want to give her time off,” said Cordelia matter-of-factly, though a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

Nick shook his head fondly. “I’ll talk to her about it,” he said, directing his attention back to the file. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to get things done around here without her. These old memory processors aren’t what they used to be.” His brow crinkled, and his eyes flickered up to her. “And since when do you call him ‘Han’?”

Cordelia leaned back on her hands. “Too weird? I’ve been trying it out lately, but I’m not really a fan either.”

“He does have a first name, ya know,” Nick said with a chuckle.

“I know that,” she told him. “But ‘John’ is so…” she made a vague gesture. “I guess I’ll just stick to obnoxious Spanish pet names for now.”

Nick chuckled. “Y’know,” he said, “He did have a nickname he went by when he lived here as a kid.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. Though I’m not sure he would appreciate me tellin’ you…”

Cordelia pushed herself off her desk so she stood in front of him, her chin tilted up at him. “The thing is, Valentine,” she said a low, scheming voice, offering him her pinky. “He doesn’t have to know you told me.”

Nick’s still-dim eyes flickered from her offered finger to her face with an almost begrudging kind of smile. “Really?”

“Yep,” she said, waggling her pinky enticingly at him.

He rolled his eyes, and reached to hook a metal pinky around hers when the door was shoved open once more.

Ellie stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and chest heaving like she’d sprinted there.

“You two need to get out here,” she said breathlessly before either of them could speak. “Now.”


End file.
